Cordelia Chase, Last Daughter of Krypton
by DarthTenebrus
Summary: Companion story to "Fighting the Darkness" by LateVMLover, this follows Cordelia Chase after she awakens in the Fortress of Solitude and learns her new destiny.


Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer is the property of Joss Whedon Enterprises/Sand Dollar Productions/Mutant Enemy, Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. Any references to actual persons, places or events is purely coincidental and should not be inferred. No profit is being derived from this work of fiction.

 **Cordelia Chase, Last Daughter of Krypton**

"Cordelia Chase?"

The first clue of her continued existence was a disembodied voice, calling to her from the blackness. It sounded fatherly and old, old beyond all ages, yet full of youth at the same time.

"Doubtless you are wondering who I am and how I know your name. It is equally doubtless you have other questions, the most pertinent among them being the fact that you are still alive. I shall do my best to answer the ones I can, and as for the rest, we will work together to discover the answers."

*Am I dead? How am I talking to you, and who are you?*

"No," the voice replied, "you are very much alive, though you have been in a state of unconsciousness now for around nine of your months. I am an artificial consciousness speaking to you within the stasis pod my son, Kal-El, placed you in following your arrival. I am based on Jor-El, his father. He and one other like him are the last survivors of a race of humans that perished long ago, in another galaxy. We placed you in a state of suspended animation inside this pod, one of many in this Genesis Chamber. Here, in this Fortress of Solitude, we have endeavoured to our utmost to ease your convalescence until you can awaken and emerge."

*A coma?*

"You would call it that, yes," Jor-El's avatar chuckled. "You've figured out by now that your world is not alone in this universe. My son and the other that I mentioned are the last survivors of our homeworld, Krypton."

*They run out of weird names in scifi so fast already, they're resorting to the Periodic Table? What, is there a planet out there somewhere called Lead?*

Cordelia could swear she heard laughter, indicating amusement from the voice that called itself Jor-El.

"Not quite, though that is rather clever. No, my homeworld and the element on your Periodic Table have nothing to do with each other. My world, however, no longer exists, having destroyed itself many thousands of your years ago as a victim of an ecological calamity. As I said, I myself am not truly here-the voice you hear is merely an imprint of the artificial consciousness controlling this facility, named as it is as a refuge of sorts for my son. He arrived on your world around twenty-three of your years ago. He was raised as a human, he learned to be human, he has a human identity, and he is now a child of Earth as much as he is a child of Krypton. Your world knows him as Superman, for the yellow sun of your world has nourished him and given him...abilities far beyond those of a baseline human, abilities which, due to the nature of your convalescence, you too will soon possess."

*Huh? Are you telling me you're turning me into one of… _you_? What gives you the right to….?!*

"The nature of your convalescence has required certain changes to your genetic coding. All those traits that are essential to your physical identity, the visions, your memory and your personality, you will retain. You will remain Cordelia Chase, yet that is all. The remainder could only be stripped away and replaced with Kryptonian genetic coding. Your human body was breathing on its own, but it could no longer sustain itself-if it could have been done otherwise, you would have remained physically human. The human physicians had done all that they could. As I indicated, though you were breathing on your own, nothing could wake you. Angel and Kal-El concluded that the ones you refer to as the Senior Partners were keeping you in your coma through some mystical means. So essentially, when you emerge from your chrysalis, you will remain fully Cordelia Chase, but you will also be fully Kryptonian, with no trace of the demonic gene code that enabled you to receive the visions you had been experiencing."

*You mean they won't hurt anymore? Hate to break the news to you, buster, but the demon part of me that I accepted allowed me to have the visions without the migraine factor. Plus I was once Ascended…*

"And you returned to the mortal plane shortly afterwards to give birth to the one your friends referred to as Jasmine," Jor-El finished for her. "I am aware of what had transpired for you, and what you have been made to endure. Jasmine's birth was severely traumatic, and you will be able to deal with that, but we must focus on the present. Your body is currently in a state of metamorphosis, requiring me to establish this neural link between us as a means of communication. I had to wait, of course, until your new Kryptonian brain was sufficiently developed to facilitate this. I copied your memory, your identity, all those thing that make you uniquely you onto a series of imaginal discs, which were then reintroduced into your new brain while it was still in the beginning stages of its development…"

*This sucks rocks…*

"Indeed, yes, but I imagine you would prefer not to be dead…"

*Hell, no!*

"Then rest, and reflect on your life, both as it was and what it will soon become."

A Week Later

Cordelia heard her heart beat again for the first time in as long as she could recall. Certainly, she remembered the sound, but she never really paid it any mind before the coma. It never felt or sounded this strong and healthy before, though.

And there were more sensations. They came rushing in nearly all at once, and yet she was able to process each one separately. The red of her closed eyelids as intense light poured through them. The rush of blood in her veins. The softness of her skin as the cool air of the stasis pod caressed her. The gentle rhythm of her breath in and out of strong lungs, and the tang of sterile air filling her nostrils.

"Cordelia?"

She heard Jor-El's voice again. The surprising bit was hearing it with her ears now. Somehow she was able to judge the distance, even within her stasis pod, from her ears to the speakers embedded in the walls of…

"The Fortress of Solitude." She thought her voice sounded normal, but the effort of using her new vocal cords only produced a volume of 15.36 decibels, by her reckoning. "Hey - my voice is weak. Why doesn't it sound weak to my ears?"

Jor-El's voice replied, "Your new body is now fully formed, Cordelia. Your ears are far more sensitive now than you realise, but you are speaking with a new voice for the first time. I would suggest caution when you try to open your eyes," it continued, "as there will be some momentary discomfort.'

"Okay," she conceded, managing a whisper of six or so decibels.

She tried to open her eyes just a crack, about five degrees, but instead they flew open, and brilliant white light from glowing crystals all around her stabbed through to her brain. She shouted in agony and screwed her eyes shut again, the eyelids pressing against each other with a pressure approaching 14.85 kilopascals.

And how did she know such precise measurements, simply by feel? More importantly, how was she correct about it on the first guess?

"Holy shit, I just guessed at how much pressure I'm using to keep my eyes closed. Which, may I just say, _THIS LIGHT FRIGGIN HURTS_ , Jor-El! Nine quintillion lumens is way more than the average flashbang grenade, buster - my eyes shoulda been burnt out!"

Jor-El's voice chuckled in amusement. "Your senses are now sharpened and strengthened to degrees far beyond what your human brain would have comprehended, Cordelia. Your Kryptonian brain is capable of perfect recall of any facts, all the knowledge you gained throughout your human existence. You are now capable of so much more." Jor-El paused, perhaps in thought. "Perhaps it is time for you to emerge from your chrysalis. We should see just what your limits are, and how quickly you can grow beyond them. All you need to do now is to break free."

"That's it?" Cordelia queried with some hesitation. "Just get out of this?"

"A chrysalis is meant to be broken and discarded once the caterpillar has finished changing into a butterfly, Cordelia."

A short laugh escaped her from within the crystal cocoon. "Well, don't YOU know how to flatter a girl? Ok, here goes…"

Queen C began to strain against the crystal lattice shell surrounding her. It seemed at first not to yield, but her next effort was rewarded with a resounding crack, which encouraged her to continue. Crack after crack was heard as Cordy tried moving first her arms, then her legs, then other parts of herself, until the shell began to vibrate in protest, and then, at the last, one supreme effort caused the shell to explode, sending fragments and shards of transparent crystal all over the place, tinkling clearly as they skittered across the floor or impacted on the walls. The light then dimmed, the shattered remains of the stasis pod no longer capable of producing light at its previous intensity, and Cordelia was able to slowly relieve the pressure on her eyelids enough to attempt opening them. The ambient light of the Genesis Chamber, seemingly produced by the walls themselves, was bright, very bright, but thankfully no longer pain-inducing, and Cordelia managed to open them very slightly. The eyelids flew open, same as before with the slightest effort, but this time Cordelia merely flinched and shut her eyes, covering them with her hands to allow her to open them to a vastly reduced luminous intensity, giving them time to adjust.

Once enough time had passed Cordelia dared to lower her hands and open her eyes fully. She marveled at the sophistication, the artistry in everything. The walls, the ceiling, every surface and every instrument - all made from the clearest crystal. Her stasis pod had been removed from one of the walls, which was comprised of a latticework filled with similar pods and maturation chambers arranged in a honeycomb fashion. In the middle of the floor was a raised circular platform, also crystal, above which floated a pair of metallic crystal hoops that perpetually tilted toward each other in a rotating fashion so they were always in contact. That point of contact perpetually revolved around the centerpoint along its vertical axis, that same centerpoint located within the plane of contact.

She also saw Jor-El, dressed in a glowing white outfit. White pants were tucked into calf-length white boots with slight heels. A white tunic was tucked into the waist, and on the chest was emblazoned a stylised black pentagon, pointed downwards and resembling a hollow shield, within which was inscribed a black stylised "S". A long cloak with sleeves, the same shade of brilliant white, topped off the ensemble. His hair was even white - the only clue Cordy had that it was a bottle job were the thick black eyebrows that framed his face. His expression radiated vast knowledge and serenity, as well as a slightly generous measure of accomplishment and some amusement upon seeing her. A thought occurred to her then, in regards to said amusement, and she followed his gaze…

And screamed as she wrapped her arms around her very naked body.

She stopped screaming just as soon as she started, as several things occurred to her in that very brief moment of vulnerability. One - she realised she should not have expected to come out of that maturation chamber fully clothed. There was something to be said about clothes making the woman, but taking it to its extreme opposite by having clothes literally grow from the woman was asking for the funny little guys in the white coats to pay a visit.

Still, the solution to _that_ little problem could have been facilitated by having her clothes laid out for her to put on when she came out, as well as having her chrysalis placed somewhere that could have afforded her a measure of privacy.

Two - she noticed that there was not a single window in the room, which brought a sense of relief.

And for a third, yes, Jor-El was standing just there in front of her, or rather, he was, for in the mere blink of an eye she had crossed the length of the room and had hid behind a table at a speed she had never before imagined moving. Plus he was strangely translucent, meaning that while she could see him, she could also see through his image. He _had_ mentioned earlier that he was not really there, that he was an artificial consciousness in the Fortress's mainframe, so that should have come as no surprise.

"Where are my clothes?" she asked, calmer now and less mortified after these realisations. With no obvious threat of some loser peeping Tom trying to peep on the Super Cordy's super bod, she felt comfortable enough, even, to lower her arms and walk out from behind concealment.

The avatar nodded his head and pointed to a hatch in the wall. At once it seemed to disintegrate, revealing a closet of sorts, with a shimmering white skinsuit and boots.

"You were brought here," he said, "by my son in clothing meant to keep you warm during the journey, but those clothes had to be destroyed after sustaining damage beyond any hope of repair. These garments, you will find, are far more durable for the degree of comfort they provide. They fasten together on their own at the seam - there are no buttons or zippers with which you would be familiar. You may try them on, and if you find they do not fit right, then I shall synthesise similar garments that will fit you better."

Cordelia walked into the closet at a much more sedate pace, noting how she was neither chilled or hot within the laboratory. She took a moment to walk around, looking at the skinsuit more closely. It seemed to produce its own light, which she found way curious but not in the least unsettling. It also seemed to be formed entirely from one piece of fabric - aside from a single line going down the back from the neck to just below the waist, she saw no seams or fasteners anywhere. She touched the line at the neck, and st once it split open all the way down. Her curiosity abundantly piqued, she reached for the skinsuit and plucked it off the stand, then she slid her legs in one at a time, and then her arms, surprised at the softness of the fabric and how it clung to her almost perfectly. A strange feeling went up her spine, but within moments she realised it was the skinsuit's seam actually closing by itself.

"Ok, that was very weird, but I think I could get used to that, the way this thing feels so great to wear," she mused aloud.

"Try the boots and the cape," Jor-El's voice sounded, as if out of nowhere, and Cordelia jumped slightly..

It was just then that she noticed the cape for the first time, hanging from the near wall, the same brilliant, glowing white as the rest. She put on the boots, and their feel at how easily her feet slid in was so magnificent...this was something she never wanted to take off. Or maybe she did, only so she could enjoy the pleasure of putting it on again. Cordelia found herself moaning softly in delight at the idea, her eyes closing to shut out all other sensations. She spent a few seconds to luxuriate, sad that she couldn't devote the time she wanted and cursing herself mildly for a hedonistic fool, and then she turned her attention to the cape on the wall.

It had a small chestplate, shaped in the same black pentagon shield encasing the letter 'S', and clearly meant to be worn by a woman, as it was compressed top to bottom with the two sides on the bottom recessed to accommodate fully developed breasts. She touched it - it felt warm, unlike cold metal, and Cordelia wondered briefly whether it was made from the same crystal as everything else around her seemed to be. She picked up the cape by the chestplate and lowered it over her head, allowing the fabric to drape over her shoulders and down her back to the floor. The chestplate made contact and sealed itself to her skinsuit between her collarbones and the upper swell of her bust - she was further surprised, to her enjoyment, by its utter lack of weight. Crystal it was, then.

She emerged from the closet, feeling for all the world like a queen in her royal raiment, the Kryptonian garments looking as though they were made for her alone. The image of Jor-El regarded her with no small measure of satisfaction.

"Cordelia, you now look like a true daughter of the House of El," he complimented her.

"I've never worn anything like this, Jor-El," she replied, wondering in amazement where clothes like this had been all her life…

"Better enjoy it while you can, it's not like there are any more outfits where that came from…" Jor-El countered, deciding that the time for total truth had come, having allowed her to wear the crest of the House of El. "As I had before mentioned, there are now only a very few of us Kryptonians remaining in the universe, the rest of us having met our end on a planet whose core had collapsed and imploded many thousands of years ago. It didn't help, of course, that the Science Council of Krypton had authorised the core's harvesting, which hastened the process. None of which is here or there, naturally," he added hastily, noticing Cordelia's increasingly annoyed expression, "but it does lead up to what you need to learn about our history and, quite possibly, our future." As he spoke, he indicated the hoops of rotating crystal steel, in which a series of three-dimensional images manifested themselves. There were mostly men, but four among their number were women.

A blonde woman, roughly Cordelia's age, a mature brunette wearing the same style of glowing white clothing as Jor-El, and two others wearing clothing as black as their hair and as forbidding as their countenances. One was tall, with full lips and large eyes in a gaunt face, whose clothing, while not clingy, nonetheless accentuated generous curves on an equally gaunt frame. The shorter one had a short pixie-wig haircut and elfin features, wearing what appeared to be armour.

"Who are the women?" Cordelia found herself asking, rather put-off as she felt regarding the black-clad she-devils.

"You are right to ask, as each of them had a part in the remaking of Kryptonian society, or rather, what it will become as we, as a race, are now functionally extinct," the image of Jor-El replied somberly. Apparently it had confirmed its earlier claim of being a consciousness, as capable as it seemed of projecting legitimate emotional expression. "The blonde is my niece, Kara, the daughter of my brother Zor-El. He was chief among the scientists of our capital city of Kandor. He had this curious idea of miniaturising the city and encapsulating it in a transparent vessel, to preserve it in case of such a cataclysm as what befell Krypton. Perhaps his fate is as yet unknown, but that would be overly optimistic of me. By all accounts Kandor suffered the same fate as the rest of Krypton. As for Kara, she lives still, here on Earth along with my son Kal-El. Your people know them respectively as Supergirl and Superman."

Cordelia's eyebrows shot up in amusement. "Supers, huh? So what does that make me, Super Who?"

"I'm sure your people will find a fitting appellation for you."

"Well, I've always liked Queen C," she shrugged. "They used to call me that in high school."

"I might ask you about that later," Jor-El nodded. "But to continue - the next was my wife, Lara Lor-Van, who birthed Kal-El. She was an exceptionally-skilled astronaut, and like me, a scientist of the highest calibre, who harboured no illusions about Krypton's doom when presented with the data. While I pleaded our case to the Science Council, she spent the time preparing an escape craft for our son. As for us, we resigned ourselves to share Krypton's fate, as we were still products of its culture. You see, for many millennia Krypton's young were genetically engineered and birthed in Genesis Chambers such as this one, their minds filled with the knowledge that would shape their destinies before they were even finished forming, be they scientists, statesmen, teachers, artisans, or soldiers. Kal-El's was the first natural birth in many thousands of years by our reckoning, and we were resolved that he would be free to forge his own path, to live his life as he chooses. This, of course, was viewed by many in our society as heresy, sven my closest friend and compatriot. That is, of course, until he turned against the Council and took up arms against our people."

As he spoke, the images of the people under discussion repeated themselves within the pair or rotating crystal steel hoops, settling now and again as Jor-El spoke on one particular image or another. At the mention of the last, the image now settled on a man of imposing stature, with black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a trimmed goatee sans moustache, and dressed in the same frightful black armour as several of the others.

"This man?" Cordelia now pointed to him. "Guy looks creepy to me."

It was apparent that the image of Jor-El was expressing sorrow and regret. "He, as well as a number of the others, rebelled against the Council and attempted a coup d'etat. His name was Zod, and he had been placed in charge of Krypton's defences and security forces. He and I differed greatly on how to save Krypton. While I expressed the opinion that a change of circumstances after a planetwide evacuation would cause our people to re-embrace the ideals of freedom and self-determination, General Zod only wanted to save certain bloodlines - you see, he wanted to remake Kryptonian society into one of his choosing, a society that would accept him as absolute ruler. Even in death he, and those who survived with him, now serve as a cautionary tale. The other two women you saw, Ursa and Faora-Ul, were among his top lieutenants. Ursa was...a perversion of hatred and malevolence, incapable of love or any sort of good will, her lusts held in check only by Zod's greater ambitions. She must have seen something in him that appealed to her appetites, those being the only things that she followed. She was as evil as she was beautiful. The other one, Faora-Ul, was an officer in Zod's chain of command, and thus was bound to him by her genetic heritage and sense of duty. She was every bit the opposite of Ursa, aside from her own appearance - a warrior to the core, always in readiness for the next conflict. If not for her loyalty to Zod, she might have found herself tasked with my son's guardianship. When Zod's World Engine over Metropolis was destroyed and sucked into the Phantom Zone, she was somehow, by some means as yet unknown to me, prevented from passing through with the rest of its crew, and now has gone to ground somewhere here, on Earth. She has been very careful thus far not to reveal her whereabouts, as she knows that to do so would invite immediate action by my son and Kara Zor-El to apprehend and neutralise her. I can only hope that her time here since the World Engine's destruction has taught her to look at these people with better eyes…."

"I wish I could have met some of them," Cordelia mused, not without a healthy measure of fear in contemplating the less savoury among the images she saw…

"There will be time to learn more about them, and the lessons they can teach. For now, we should concentrate our attentions on developing yourabilities…."

Cordelia stood in the snowdrift, still surprised at the cold she felt nowhere but her face, and awed at what she had just accomplished. Before her stretched a furrow of bare earth nearly a mile ahead of her, a furrow she had cut through the ice and snow just by staring hard and allowing her anger to surge forth. It had built up in her eyes as an almost unbearable heat. At first she had screamed at seeing lasers shoot out from her eyes, and in the next instant had run into the Fortress of Solitude in a blur, horrified at what she had seen herself do and begging to Jor-El's avatar for some sort of explanation. All he had done in response was to laugh lightly in amusement and remembrance. Kal-El had done the same thing when he had experienced his first use of what he had later termed "heat vision." Together they had developed a training strategy to hone first his, and now Cordelia's, skill in the use and control of that ability, emphasising restraint first and foremost. Later she had gone back and thought about how to pull it back and shut it down, lest she lose control and harm an innocent life. That, Cordelia knew, she did not want on her conscience.

Another skill she had fun learning was blowing away stuff - it was like blowing out a birthday candle, but thousands of times stronger. She learned she could generate gale-force winds just by blowing, hard. It didn't take her long to develop that skill, and she wondered, later learning, that she could freeze stuff by blowing hard at it for a long time. She had even giggled once like a little girl at imagining all the neat things she could do by combining heat vision with what she had dubbed her "freeze breath". Ice sculptures and hasty snow shelters were only two of the things she had imagined creating with her powers. There were other things she imagined doing, but these were what made her powers fun to have and use at times.

She found out several things at once when she tried jumping. First, she could jump **REALLY HIGH** now. Her first attempt at a vertical leap sent her at least one hundred feet into the air. She was having so much fun she hadn't realised until she peaked out and began to start falling back down just how high up that was, and then she started screaming like a banshee when she realised then that it wasn't going to be an easy landing, that because she didn't know how to land she was going to hit, and hit hard…

When her flailing body finally impacted on the ground, she was beyond convinced that she was either dead or so severely injured that she wouldn't make it to the nearest hospital. After about five seconds she began to realise she wasn't paralysed, having been able to wiggle some fingers and toes, then she noticed she wasn't in pain. A cursory inspection of her body for damage revealed that not only was she still in her usual fabulous condition, there was not so much as a bruise, broken nail or split end on her. Her clothes didn't even show as much as a tear or a stain or a loose thread. In fact, looking around, she determined that the only damage that had occurred was to the ground itself. She had stood up and then noticed that she couldn't see the Fortress anywhere…

 _Boy, did I hit the ground HARD…_ she internalised, finally noticing the ten-foot-deep impact crater in which she found herself standing. An impact crater she had created by falling from one hundred feet up, which would have been deeper had there been no ten-foot-deep snowdrift to cushion her fall.

"I am fucking invulnerable," she said aloud in shock and, indeed, her horror, understanding thex ramifications of any damage she could end up causing in a populated area. This had almost turned her off to learning her next lesson.

She had already learned that she could move insanely fast. What Cordelia Chase had yet to learn was that her new Kryptonian body was capable of not only greater, sustained bursts of speed, but also of flight. Jor-El had explained to her that his son learned how to fly first by continued leaping to ever greater heights, and then also by using low-level bursts of heat vision to create thermal currents that kept his body aloft and enabled him to propel himself to ever greater speeds in midflight. Landing, of course, proved the most difficult, as neither Kal-El nor she had wings to generate lift, and so could not exactly slow down on their own. It turned out that the capes both he and she wore served a dual purpose, attitude control and stability during flight, and deceleration in preparing to land by generating drag. Cordelia laughed out loud when Jor-El spoke of his son's first attempts at flight, especially when he had crashed into a mountainside, and she had gasped in horror at learning that his impact had punched a very big hole in the mountain. In fact, Kal-El had gone _through_ the mountain and caused a landslide. Cordelia resolved herself that she would take much greater care in learning to fly and land. Low and slow at first, in order to master landing, was her initial strategy, and then she progressed slowly to ever greater speeds and higher altitudes.

It wasn't long before she found herself going up, up, and away into the stratosphere. It was there, in the darkening sky, with the vast horizon of the Earth curving away before her, that she learned one thing above all others...how to hover.

Flying was really, Really _FUN_.

She let all the knowledge, all the skill, everything she had learned and felt in a short time wash over her in a tide of ecstasy…

The Air Up There was so thin that she never heard herself screaming in sheer delight.

Cordy had finally floated gently to the ground in front of the Fortress, and though her body had made contact with the earth and the snow, her soul remained in the heavens. She turned on her heels and stepped gaily towards the Fortress and Jor-El, feeling light as a feather and struggling to keep from skipping merrily inside. Upon seeing the computer-generated image of the ancient scientist, she turned her thousand-kilowatt Pepsodent smile on him, which he returned, serenely inclining his head.

"I was hovering nearly a hundred thousand feet above the Earth, Jor-El. I hovered!" she exclaimed, her eyes awash with nearly-shedded tears. "Up there in the stratosphere, I felt...alive. I honestly think I was never really alive before this. Even with the air as thin as it is up there, I could breathe, and I could hear and see so much. It was the most amazing thing I ever felt."

"And one day, Cordelia, with your help and the help of those of us left over from Krypton's devastation, Earth's people will share in that experience. I told my son once that they are a good people, that they want to be a good people, but that they only need a light to show them the way. It is for that reason above all that we are here, Cordelia Chase."

A moment of curiosity flashed in her eyes, and a question arose in her mind, one that she knew she had to ask. She had a new body now, one that would prove immune to the ravages endured by her now-nonexistent human body, but her new Kryptonian genome was surely based on something, on someone's DNA profile…

"Jor-El," she spoke then, "the DNA code in this new body of mine had to come from someone, right? I mean, this can't be an entirely original construction - someone either provided a sample or there were genetic records or something. So whose daughter am I now?"

The image of the white-haired scientist smiled and grasped his cloak. "Your genetic template is based upon my own and my wife's. But in every way that matters, you are still Cordelia Chase, daughter of Gregory and Virginia."

Cordy adopted a sterner expression then, speaking with a sudden, intense loathing. "My human parents were a pair of consummate bastards, never showing me any love or affection, punishing me for even the slightest things. There was no hesitation on their parts to remind me that I was their little mistake. I'd like to go find them, in Rio de Janeiro or wherever they happen to be living the high life while they're running from the IRS, and show them just what a wonderful mistake I turned out to be, right before I publicly humiliate them and hand them over to the authorities." A slow smile creased her face as she contemplated her future. "I want a Kryptonian name. Something that links my name with you and Lara. What about….Cora?"

"Cora Jor-El?" Jor-El's eyebrows raised in surprise at her declaration.

The sound of that name caused Cordy's own eyes to widen in surprise and, if truth were told, gratitude at its significance. "Cora Jor-El...I like it. Cora Jor-El, sister of Kal-El. I'm Superman's sister…"

Jor-El nodded, spreading his arms wide, "Then, Cora Jor-El, my daughter, sister of Kal-El, go. Return to the world you know. Act according to the dictates of your conscience, and continue the good work you began with Angel and your friends. Show them that even the darkest of souls can find their way back to the light. For that is what Cora means in our language...light."

Hearing his - her father's - blessing, Cordelia - no, Cora, she corrected herself. Cora Jor-El. Cora stepped outside and knelt down, gathering her strength…

And with a mighty leap, she took to the skies, the force of her liftoff sending a shock wave through the ground, and above, already ten thousand feet up, she broke the sound barrier as she headed south and west, back to Los Angeles…

To her future.


End file.
